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The long description
The front page is kept short. This is what it said in full until 2026-10-12, when it was cut down: what the mod does at length, what is good to know, and what was tried on each system. Nothing was lost in the cutting.
Crashes as they are. A craft that hits the ground breaks up from the parts that hit it, and what breaks is the parts' own skins: a tank is crushed in at the end that hit, has its underside torn away as it slides, splits, leaks for a moment and goes up. A rocket that comes in at a slant digs into soft ground, tears itself open, scoops up the earth and stops within tens of metres, leaving a scar of torn earth and a trail of torn panels, rings and shreds of itself, every piece trailing a little smoke. Parts from other mods break up as the game's own do.
The same throw, filmed twice from the same place, each time in a scene loaded afresh, at the same moments: 0.9, 1.4, 2.0, 2.9 and 5.6 seconds after the throw; the test rocket's tanks a tenth full, so that its fire does not hide the rest. Above, with Fragmentation: it touches, slides away from the camera raising the ground's dust and tearing its underside open, its tanks split and go up one after another, and the wreck stops some 80 m from where it touched, burning at the end of the scar it dug. Below, the game's own crash, with Volumetric Explosions' fire: every part goes up where it first touched, close in front of the camera, and the cloud of it fills the view.
What is left, close by: the wreck where it stopped, on its burn mark (left); the same from the other side, the scar it dug coming in behind it (middle); a torn piece of a tank's skin, its edge in strips, and an arc of one of its rings beyond (right).
For Kerbal Space Program 1.12.x. Needs Keystone, a separate download (its page on SpaceDock): this mod does not load without it. Works with Volumetric Explosions where it is installed (its fire and smoke are then the explosions, and leaks, fires, the smoke of every piece and the dust of a slide go into its air); that too is a separate download (on SpaceDock).
Nothing in it is particular to one system: it is plain C#, with no shader of its own. The fire and smoke are Volumetric Explosions', which draws them as a volume on OpenGL (a Mac, Linux) and, with its shaders built for Direct3D, on Windows. Where that mod draws flat sprites instead (an older copy of it), the leaks, burning pieces and dust of this one are not drawn at all.
- Parts tear. Each part's skin is cut into panels, few large and many small, from its own meshes (any part from any mod). A blow crushes the end that hit and folds the rest; dragged along the ground, the underside is torn away panel by panel and the top kept; a tank torn right round comes apart; a part that has lost the skin where it is joined to the next comes away from it.
- A wreck digs in. On soil it ploughs, deeper as it goes; torn open, it scoops up the earth and holds in it, and leaves a shallow scar with low broken lips, clods and crumbs of earth beside it. On paving it scrapes; an engine torn loose throws sparks, sheds its bell and its fittings and is worn to pieces as it goes. A wreck does not bound along the ground or roll on like a wheel. (The grass along the space centre's runway is soil; the lawns round its buildings count as paving.)
- Tanks split before they go up: what is in a split tank comes out for a moment (alight, most times, where there is oxygen), then the rest goes up there, while the wreck goes on burning.
- The pieces are the parts' own: torn panels with their insides and torn edges showing, rings and stringers out of torn tanks, engines' bells and pumps whole; shreds, rivets, foil, clods and slabs of turf. Solid, thrown by blasts, at rest they cost nothing.
- In orbit too: a craft that clips another tears at what it hits; a holed tank leaks and goes up.
Install Keystone first: it is a download of its own, and its Keystone folder goes into your KSP
GameData. Then copy the Fragmentation folder from this mod's download into GameData beside it. Volumetric
Explosions is not needed, but with it the fire and smoke of a crash are drawn as a volume.
In the Keystone window (the keystone button on the game's toolbar, or Option-K on a Mac, Alt-K elsewhere).
| Setting | Installed as | |
|---|---|---|
| Fragmentation | on | off: crashes as the game has them |
| How far a wreck slides | 1 | more: further |
| How tough parts are | 1 | more: craft hold together longer |
| Pieces at most | 150 | |
| How long pieces stay | 120 s | |
| Leaks, fires and dust | on | needs Volumetric Explosions |
| Wrecks moving further off | on | (0.4.0) off: a wreck on the ground goes on rails at 350 m from the craft flown, as the game has it |
- While a craft could hit something at speed, its parts' crash tolerance is raised (a mod that shows it will show a very large number) and this mod decides what a blow does. A craft that touches down within its parts' tolerances is not hurt, as in the game. What water does is left to the game.
- A big crash costs about what the game's own crash with Volumetric Explosions costs (the same throw, measured each way in a scene loaded afresh: 31 to 38 frames a second through the ten seconds after it, against 28 to 35; the worst single frame 170 ms against 147; Apple M5 Pro, 1280 by 720).
- Made on 2026-10-09 and 10; see what was tested. Nobody has played with it yet. 0.2.2 (the evening of 2026-10-10): wrecks that no longer bound or roll on, engines worn to pieces as they are dragged (a loose one thrown along the runway at 67 m/s now lies 60 to 80 m on, where it rolled 240 to 330 m unmarked), the scar drawn as torn earth, the runway's grass as soil.
| System | |
|---|---|
| Mac | Made and tried here (KSP 1.12.5, OpenGL). |
| Windows | Tried on Windows 11 (KSP 1.12.5, Direct3D 11; 0.1, before 0.2.0's tearing and trails), with Volumetric Explosions: Kerbal X crashed by the pad, its parts dented and broken by this mod (its lines in the game's log), the wreck sliding 26 m, the fire and smoke drawn as a volume. Then 0.2.0: Kerbal X thrown into the assembly building's wall at 60 m/s, 25 m up: the pod went up, tanks split and leaking ("8000 kg in it, alight"), 78 pieces of wreckage, smoke up the building's face; 53 to 65 frames a second just after. Then 0.2.2 (2026-10-11, with Volumetric Explosions 0.6.3): Kerbal X let fall onto the grass by the pad from 32, 110 and 150 m, and a Kerbal 1 from 45 m onto the road: the log told of tanks broken into pieces and torn away, a tank and two boosters "split and is leaking ... alight", a booster gone up, debris left as it lay after sliding one to three metres; in the pictures the blast's fire and smoke, earth thrown up in a ring, a scorched scar with clods round it, and at the end three fires burning on the ground at pieces of the wreck, each under its own smoke. The pieces themselves were mostly hidden in the blast's smoke from where the camera stood: smoke trailing from single pieces was not made out. The Kerbal 1's fall again with TUFX taken out: the same. No exception in the game's log. |
| Linux | Never run. |
More: how it works, what it is based on, limits.